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Stories from SlateWill the Next Wave of Anti-Obama Movies Be Made by Liberals?http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/01/28/anti_obama_movies_documentaries_dirty_wars_and_we_steal_secrets_suggest.html
<p>Are progressive documentary filmmakers finished with giving Barack Obama a free pass?</p>
<p>Last Monday, as much of the country celebrated Obama’s second inauguration, the Sundance Film Festival was presenting a very different view of the commander-in-chief. Two films, Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley’s <em>Dirty Wars</em> and Alex Gibney’s <em>We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks</em> both take hard, unforgiving looks at the president and his policies.</p>
<p>It’s not hard to find Obama-bashing nonfiction these days—see last year’s rightwing hit <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0094V8OXG/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B0094V8OXG&amp;adid=04EM36XXVHFQ04366XZB&amp;">2016: Obama’s America</a></em>, for instance—but it was at least mildly surprising to see two such films at Sundance, generally a bastion of liberalism, founded by famous lefty Robert Redford. Sundance hosted the premiere of the Al Gore documentary <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000ICL3KG/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B000ICL3KG&amp;adid=177Z5538N8BK32K6TKET&amp;">An Inconvenient Truth</a></em> in 2006. This year, as the festival was getting under way, the Huffington Post confirmed the festival’s bleeding-heart reputation with an article titled, “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/18/who-is-dayani-cristal-sundays-documentaries_n_2504066.html">Liberal Documentaries Light Up Sundance</a>.”</p>
<p>Of course, the two films are, in fact, made by liberals. Jeremy Scahill is a contributor to <em>The Nation</em>, Rowley made the the WTO protest doc <em>This Is What Democracy Looks Like</em>, and Alex Gibney won an Oscar for his U.S. torture expose <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001BEK8FQ/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B001BEK8FQ&amp;adid=14QZYF935NB5V1RT30PH&amp;">Taxi to the Dark Side</a></em>. What they’ve done, and what filmmakers have seemed reluctant to do over the past four years, is attack Obama from the left.</p>
<p><em>Dirty Wars</em>, in particular, comes down hard on the current administration and its <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/12/14/dronestream_u_s_drone_attacks_on_twitter.html">expanded use of drone attacks</a> to wage war overseas. In one scene, Scahill speaks, in hushed somber narration, about what goes on “in the shadows”—and the film cuts to an ominous low-angle black-and-white portrait of President Obama, making him out to be some kind of arch-villain. Indeed, much of the film portrays Obama’s international security efforts as nothing less than barbaric, leading to the murders of innocent women and children in Afghanistan and Yemen, the arming of immoral Somali warlords and the perpetuation of global terror, rather than its cessation.</p>
<p>By comparison, Gibney’s jibes against Obama are far less barbed. But even though <em>We Steal Secrets</em> focuses, as its title suggests, on Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange, the film includes a few stinging attacks against the country’s executive branch. Most notably, Gibney includes a famous clip from a White House news conference in which ABC News’ Jake Tapper presses Obama about the treatment of alleged Wikileaks collaborator Bradley Manning. The film makes powerfully evident that Manning was, in fact, unfairly abused, stripped, and held in solitary confinement, which makes Obama’s response seem all the more callous and out-of-touch. “I’ve actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of [Manning’s] confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards,” the president says. “They assured me that they are.”</p>
<p>The clip is exactly the kind of gotcha moment documentaries have frequently employed when examining the country’s 43rd president, George W. Bush, often portrayed like a deer caught in the headlights of the media. During the Bush years, a whole cottage industry developed around documentaries trashing the president and his cabinet: <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBH3W2/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B000FBH3W2&amp;adid=10C65054Q357QWWK39XR&amp;">Why We Fight</a></em>, <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000U6YJMO/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B000U6YJMO&amp;adid=1T6SF5FTVTKWFFTWESFR&amp;">No End in Sight</a></em>, <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002V7SMA/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B0002V7SMA&amp;adid=0K7432BPDG1XWQXH2QZ8&amp;">Bush’s Brain</a></em>, <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00067WSV6/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B00067WSV6&amp;adid=1JWAFTFAACYEQK5SJFZT&amp;">The World According to Bush</a></em>, <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0001IXT36/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B0001IXT36&amp;adid=0TD93ADB1BDQAQ8JJJE8&amp;">Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War</a></em>, <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000MV8AAY/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B000MV8AAY&amp;adid=11702878GDC38D50GDYG&amp;">Death of a President</a></em>, and, of course, Michael Moore’s <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00005JNEI/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B00005JNEI&amp;adid=0KZX1JP2QWHYBASAWWNK&amp;">Fahrenheit 9/11</a></em>.</p>
<p>By way of contrast, of the 15 films recently short-listed for the Academy Award for Best Documentary—<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/01/10/oscars_2013_best_documentary_category_is_better_but_still_favors_newsiness.html">a prize that often favors newsy films</a>—only one, Eugene Jarecki’s <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B19HCTG/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B00B19HCTG&amp;adid=0WH2DTPC3F3S8CHVWKFD&amp;">The House I Live In</a></em>, concerns U.S. policy. And even in that film, about the failed war on drugs, the Obama Administration comes out looking pretty good (thanks largely to its passage of the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which narrowed the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine).</p>
<p>Back in 2009, Michael Moore said it was still “too early” to judge the president. “I’m willing to give the man a bit of a chance,” he explained at the premiere of <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0030Y11XS/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=0&amp;creative=0&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B0030Y11XS&amp;adid=0NB0WEPV17TFE727VZ44&amp;">Capitalism: A Love Story</a></em>. “But a year from now,” he added, “the next movie may be about him.” More than three years later, Moore still hasn’t made a movie about Obama, and some of his fans seem to be imploring him to do so. On Twitter, someone recently asked him, “Will you be doing a movie on drone use? Or that Obama has declared the execution of US citizens perfectly legit?” Even if Moore himself doesn’t, it looks like other left-leaning filmmakers are taking up the charge.</p>Mon, 28 Jan 2013 18:31:46 GMThttp://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/01/28/anti_obama_movies_documentaries_dirty_wars_and_we_steal_secrets_suggest.htmlAnthony Kaufman2013-01-28T18:31:46ZArtsWill the Next Wave of Anti-Obama Movies Be Made by Liberals?205130128004Anthony KaufmanBrow BeatBrow Beathttp://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/01/28/anti_obama_movies_documentaries_dirty_wars_and_we_steal_secrets_suggest.htmlfalsefalsefalseWill the Next Wave of Anti-Obama Movies Be Made by Liberals?Will the Next Wave of Anti-Obama Movies Be Made by Liberals?Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty ImagesWriter Jeremy Scahill and director Rick Rowley at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where their film <em>Dirty Wars </em>premiered.Yanks Nix Iraq Pixhttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts/dvdextras/2006/10/yanks_nix_iraq_pix.html
<p>&quot;Oh, not another Iraq movie.&quot;</p>
<p>That's the response Patricia Foulkrod received after sending an early version of <em>The Ground Truth</em>, her documentary about Iraq war veterans, to distribution companies in 2005. &quot;I remember a development person from Miramax who came back from Sundance and said, 'We just saw <em>Why We Fight.</em> [A historical chronicle of America's war machine] It's been done.' And I said, 'You're kidding me? We're in a war and it's been done after one movie?' &quot;</p>
<p>Foulkrod, of course, is just one of several independent filmmakers who have focused on the conflict in Iraq with the hope of capturing overlooked stories. After Michael Moore's docubuster <em>Fahrenheit 9/11</em> opened the floodgates with its $119 million in ticket sales, offering solid proof that political docs could make waves in the marketplace, a litany of films has arrived in its wake: <em>Gunner Palace</em>; <em>BattleGround</em>;<strong></strong><em>Occupation: Dreamland</em>; <em>Voices of Iraq</em>;<em> About Baghdad</em>; <em>Confronting Iraq</em>; <em>When I Came Home</em>; <em>The Blood of My Brother</em>; <em>My Country, My Country</em>; <em>Home Front</em>; <em>The War Tapes</em>; <em>Iraq in Fragments</em>; etc. But none of these films has made any significant impact, at least not yet. With the war in Iraq becoming an increasingly hot topic to Americans,<strong></strong>why aren't these films finding an audience?</p>
<p>If you examine the <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=documentary.htm">top 10 documentaries</a> ever released in America, they have a few things in common: Michael Moore, animals, and the backing of major publicity machines. The companies that released the recent nonfiction hits <em>March of the Penguins</em> (Warner Bros.) and <em>An Inconvenient Truth</em> (Paramount), for example, spent millions of dollars pushing those movies to the masses. But the Iraq docs are receiving no such boosts. Focus Features bought Foulkrod's <em>The Ground Truth</em>, and while the company is owned by Universal, its release strategy has been low-key. The one-week theatrical run for the documentary<em></em>on Sept. 15 yielded meager box-office returns of $20,000, and little media impact. Focus is currently holding an estimated 1,000<strong></strong>&quot;<em>Ground Truth</em> Gatherings,&quot; nationwide free screenings and house parties timed to the anniversary of Congress' authorization to use force in Iraq. Such a ground-roots gambit guarantees a sizable number of eyeballs and helps promote DVD sales, but it doesn't launch the movie into the public consciousness in the same way that a well-funded theatrical release would. </p>
<p>Historically, the conventional marketplace has never&nbsp;welcomed political nonfiction. Peter Davis' seminal Vietnam documentary <em>Hearts and Minds</em>, for example, failed to generate much business in U.S. theaters, despite winning the Oscar for best documentary in 1975. Although the Academy Award gave the film an initial boost, that quickly subsided; &nbsp;<em>Hearts and Minds</em> would only later find its audience over the years in noncommercial venues such as schools, colleges, and community centers. A similar fate awaits many of today's war documentaries.</p>
<p>On television, where one would expect newsy chronicles of the war to flourish, filmmakers face a similar cold shoulder. In the case of <em>The Ground Truth</em>, Foulkrod says that HBO, which has a relationship with Focus Features, had reached its fill of Iraq material. The lack of TV time may also stem from the dampening effect of the Federal Communications Commission's new anti-obscenity standards, which have only made it more difficult to air these films on public and standard broadcast television. Ken Burns' latest exhaustive doc, <em>The War</em>, recently made headlines after it was revealed that crass words spoken by World War II vets was deemed in violation of new stricter regulations.</p>
<p>Because of the sheer number of Iraq docs, they also risk cannibalizing one another's audiences. Focus's community-based distribution of <em>The Ground Truth</em> happens to collide with the release of <em>Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers</em>, the latest doc from Robert Greenwald. Greenwald pioneered the &quot;peer-to-peer&quot; release strategy with popular grassroots efforts for his <em>Outfoxed</em> and <em>Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price</em>, which used organizations like MoveOn to spread the word. This is a clever way around the feeble traditional media support for these movies, but what happens when <em>Ground Truth</em> and <em>Iraq for Sale</em> events take place during the same week, on the same day? America's liberals are in danger of house-party fatigue.</p>
<p>In a similar instance of overexposure, <em>Gunner Palace</em>, the first portrait of a U.S. platoon's exploits in Baghdad, was moderately successful last year, making $607,000 in theaters and buckets more on DVD, while <em>Occupation: Dreamland</em> was released six months later and suffered from an inability to distinguish itself from <em>Palace</em>: It made only $8,018. That's not to say the film—an excellent, more reflective look at U.S. soldiers in post-invasion Iraq—shouldn't have been made. But in the eyes of the consumer, one Iraq doc looks very similar to the next Iraq doc.</p>
<p>The jadedness of Americans as movie watchers may bear the most responsibility for Iraq docs' failures to break out. Especially for films about Iraqi civilians, from <em>Voices of Iraq</em> to <em>About Baghdad</em> to <em>The Blood of My Brother</em> to <em>My Country, My Country</em>, American audiences have shown very little interest in the plight of their Arab counterparts. &quot;I think there is a kind of apathy,&quot; says Laura Poitras, director of <em>My Country, My Country</em>, which follows a Sunni doctor during the Iraqi elections and has made only $25,000 after eight weeks in release. Having shown her documentary in Berlin and then at film festivals in the United States, Poitras admits, &quot;It was clear to me that there is a lack of engagement from the American public.&quot;</p>
<p>Oddly, as Poitras points out, there has been no shortage of interest in books about the Iraq War. Despite Americans' apparent disengagement and the glut of products that cover related territory, tomes such as <em>State of Denial</em><em>, The Looming Tower</em>, <em>Fiasco,</em> and <em>The One Percent Doctrine</em> have all climbed the nonfiction best-seller lists. Unlike books, suggests Poitras, documentaries may circulate more as &quot;commodities&quot; than &quot;in the realm of ideas.&quot; Or to put it more simply, people watch movies to be entertained, not illuminated.</p>
<p>Even so, as a greater portion of the population becomes disillusioned with the war and as the conflict rages on unabated, these documentaries may have more time to reach wider audiences. Jeff Lipsky, a distribution consultant on <em>The War Tapes</em>, an Iraq doc about three National Guardsmen who videotape themselves on the frontlines, believes the movie could play in theaters for &quot;the duration of the war.&quot; And how long might that be? He's expecting an extended run.</p>Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:25:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts/dvdextras/2006/10/yanks_nix_iraq_pix.htmlAnthony Kaufman2006-10-12T19:25:00ZWhy haven't war films found an audience?ArtsWhy are Iraq war films flopping?2151391Anthony KaufmanDvd extrashttp://www.slate.com/id/2151391falsefalsefalseWhy are Iraq war films flopping?Why are Iraq war films flopping?